Sportswear

This project will require me to focus on sportswear and high street brands. I have chosen the sport tennis as my influence and will continue to focus on design. Instead of focusing on modern tennis clothing, I want to research historical outfits, ranging from the twenties to the fifties. I hope to understand different shaping and how it has transformed over time. I have made a mood board containing a variety of tennis outfits from different decades. I done this to gain a brief insight into the changing role of women in sport and how fashion symbolises this. As the year increases, the more daring the outfit. In the modern day, old styles are now used in current fashion but transformed to fit with the designers outlook; although there might be similar collars and pleats, the  clothing becomes more dramatic as length is much shorter than it used to be. I really like the idea of taking certain elements from different decades and infusing them with modern styles and I believe this can be done by mixing materials.

Figure 1

Figure2

Here is a photograph from 1913 displaying tennis fashion. A part that interests me is the masculine influence seen in the shirt and how the body is completely covered. It seems that women, although allowed to participate in sport, were still very restrained from expressing their gender and had to limit there fashion. Where as currently women wear sportswear appropriate for the sport. As seen with the picture below, more skin is shown and the length is noticeably shorter.

Figure 3

Figure 1 Authors own
Figure 2 http://seenheardknown.com/fashion/u-s-open-fashion-through-the-years/
Figure 3 http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/celebrity-photos/2011/06/20/tennis-outfits---outrageous-tennis-style-and-fashion